VERSES FROM
THE ‘DAILY NEWS’
1846
I.—THE BRITISH LION
VERSES FROM THE ‘DAILY NEWS,’ 1846
The Daily News, it will be remembered, was founded in January 1846 by Charles Dickens, who officiated as its first editor. He soon sickened of the mechanical drudgery appertaining to the position, and resigned his editorial functions the following month. From January 21st to March 2nd he contributed to its columns a series of ‘Travelling Sketches,’ afterwards reprinted in volume form as Pictures from Italy. He also availed himself of the opportunity afforded him, by his association with that newspaper, of once more taking up the cudgels against the Tories, and, as in the case of the Examiner, his attack was conveyed through the medium of some doggerel verses. These were entitled ‘The British Lion—A New Song, but an Old Story,’ to be sung to the tune of ‘The Great Sea-Snake.’ They bore the signature of ‘Catnach,’ the famous ballad-singer, and were printed in the Daily News of January 24, 1846.
Three weeks later some verses of a totally different character appeared in the columns of the Daily News, signed in full ‘Charles Dickens.’ One Lucy Simpkins, of Bremhill (or Bremble), a parish in Wiltshire, had just previously addressed a night meeting of the wives of agricultural labourers in that county, in support of a petition for Free Trade, and her vigorous speech on that occasion inspired Dickens to write ‘The Hymn of the Wiltshire Labourers,’ thus offering an earnest protest against oppression. Concerning the ‘Hymn,’ a writer in a recent issue of Christmas Bells observes: ‘It breathes in every line the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount, the love of the All-Father, the Redemption by His Son, and that love to God and man on which hang all the law and the prophets.’